


the library of alexandria

by obscurialis



Category: Phandom/The Fantastic Foursome (YouTube RPF)
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, Alternate Universe - Library, Alternate Universe - Normal High School, Coming Out, Coming of Age, Dan Howell and Phil Lester Are Soulmates, Dan Howell and Phil Lester Are Teenagers, Dan Howell/Phil Lester Comfort, High School, I Don't Even Know, I Love You, I Tried, Jock Dan Howell, Librarians, M/M, Phil Lester Is A Sweetheart, Slow Burn, Slow Romance, Slow To Update
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-10-17
Updated: 2019-10-17
Packaged: 2020-12-21 07:29:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,897
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21071168
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/obscurialis/pseuds/obscurialis
Summary: Dan forgets to write a very important essay, and there's only one place to go in these situations: the public library.





	1. Chapter 1

_Dan Howell_,

stroked the hair of the blonde laying on his chest. Ashley traced the letters of his jacket with her fingers, and he felt fully content in the moment. Nothing could go wrong and everything was alright, and he felt her warm breath against his skin. Ashley sighed. She did that a lot, to be fair, and she seemed to mean it in every sort of way.

"I have to go, Danny. I still have the dinner to go to, and I'm already late," she said, and she got up. She gracefully pulled her t-shirt down over her stomach, and smiled at him. He smiled back at her, because she was terribly pretty when she smiled and he just couldn't help it. 

"Your moms birthday dinner?" Dan asked, an attempt to stall her, to intertwine her in a conversation and keep her here forever, with him, right there in the moment. He stroked her arms with his fingers; barely grazing her skin. He knew she absolutely loved it when he did that, and of course, she closed her eyes and enjoyed the moment, just nodding as an answer.

"Yes, it's her birthday Monday, but not everyone could come then, so we're celebrating it right now." she said, a bit later, and opened her eyes again, stepping of the bed and picking up her stuff. They'd had a lovely day, watching Ashley's favorite films all day long. And Dan realized something.

"Oh- wait, _fuck_. Ash, isn't your mom's birthday on the seventeenth?" Dan asked, and sat upright suddenly. Ashley turned around, her eyes glistening, full of confusion. She furrowed her brows in an attempt to say, 'you're making no sense' without actually saying it, because she knew he hated to hear that. Dan ruffled through his own hair, pulled down his shirt, covering his stomach too. He wasn't sure why, because Ashley knew what was under there, and his parents could care less about him, and even less about him and Ashley. If he was busy enough, they were happy. 

"Yes..?" Ashley dared to respond, still not knowing what was going on. 

"Oh fu- Oh my god. I still need to write that thing. Fuck." Dan said, slapping his own forehead. _Stupid__! Stupid! Stupid!_ he thought, with every slap. Ashley seemed to realize what was going on, and she grabbed his wrists.

"Dan..... _Dan_," she whispered. He knew she never knew what to do when he got like this, but she knew this calmed him down. Dan calmed down a little, and closed his eyes. 'Stupid' bounced around in his head, like an old DVD-screensaver would when you were unable to press play, his mind taunting itself.

"Dan," Ashley began, and he looked up at her, "I'm going to get my stuff. I'm going to go my dinner. I'm going to shut my phone off. And you're going to go to the library. And you're going to write that essay in one sitting." She patted his arm, and Dan nodded. He didn't agree with her, but he had to. If he could only just forget this, wake up tomorrow and not have to have written the essay, that would be amazing. God, I'm talking to you. Even though religion is a scam, hope you're listening. He closed his eyes again and hoped it would happen, but Ashley shook him awake again and planted a kiss on his hand.

"You want me to drive you?" she asked, and stood up once again. And Dan nodded, because he didn't have a choice, and because it was four thirty-two p.m. on a Saturday night and the library would close at six, and everything would become twice as hard if he walked. So about ten minutes later, Ashley had packed her things - finally - and re-applied a bit of make-up that'd wiped off, and she shook Dan's parents hands pretending she didn't know they didn't care, and they drove out of the terribly long driveway of Dan's house unto the hardly lit street.

It was silent, but like it almost always was with Ashley, it was not a silence that paralyzed you, but rather comforted you. The radio was on, of course, just loud enough for them to make out the words but not loud enough to escape the tiny Honda Ashley drove, and they listened to it. Dan didn't see her, staring out of the window like he was in a music-video, but Ashley probably had a small smile on her face, like she always had. 

That was one of the things Dan loved most about her. Her everpresent smiles, her cutesy giggles and her enveloping laughs. If she laughed - really laughed, something achieved rather than just done - her laugh hugged you, surrounded you with an happiness too contagious to be good for you. I mean, it was kind of logical they would date, captain of the cheerleading squad and captain of the football team, but Ashley was the sweetest girl you'd ever meet. And he was the luckiest boy ever to have her, because lord knows she has unlimited other offers, pretty as she is. He felt Ashley's car slow down, and looked up.

"We're here, Danny," she whispered - something he appreciated at that moment. He grabbed his backpack and gave her a kiss, and then he stepped out of the car. He was alone now. She honked a few times, and then she drove off. _All alone now_.

He wasn't scared by the library, of course he wasn't, but his mind was driving him crazy, showing him all the worst-case-scenarios. And he knew everything could, very likely, not work out and he'd fail this amazingly important essay and get kicked off the football team, but he also liked to think he was smart, somewhere - and he could, _maybe_, do it? Write it in time? He'd probably need help and be here tomorrow all day. 

Dan pushed open the doors, and was met with a welcoming warmth. Inside it was lighter than outside; the days were getting shorter. The library seemed abandoned - empty except for another lost student. The service desk wasn't even staffed, and Dan walked straight to a desk somewhere in a secluded little corner where the cameras didn't see you and the non-fiction lived out the rest of its sad, lonely lives. He knew where it was, hidden away by shelves higher than himself, because he'd - _who would guess?_ \- been in this exact situation before. He dropped his backpack, sat down and held his head in his hands. 

Fuck this.

He stood up again, and walked over the library's computers, and clicked around to find some books that would maybe interest him. Who cared about a history essay this much? Let his livelihood, his aspirations, depend on it? It was just American history. He could probably do this, right? Maybe he could even find one of those topics that college administrators found 'exceptional' and 'different'? 

Dan took out his phone, and googled 'gay president', and immediately the face of James Buchanan popped up. Great! He loved the gays. In a very heterosexual, heteroromantic way, of course. He typed James Buchanan into the search engine of the library's computer and pulled up some titles. He wrote them down, and walked to the shelves. Focusing his tired eyes on the words on the books, Dan walked along the shelves, tracing with his finger so he wouldn't forget where he was. 

And then he walked head first into someone.

"Oh!" he heard, and some clattering, and the rustling of papers. He had completely bumped into someone too hard, a boy, so hard he had fallen on the ground and dropped the book he was holding. Why hadn't he just watched where he was going? _Stupid Dan._

"I'm so sorry! Let me help you!" Dan said, and extended his hand, but the boy smiled, and stood up himself.

"No, it's okay," he muttered, "don't worry." 

Dan wanted to walk on, search for his books, but something stopped him. It wasn't the boy, of course, why would it, but something inside him made him stand there and look down at his feet and sneak a glance at the boy's raven hair, messy and untamed and with light brown roots poking through. Maybe time had stopped, and everyone had stood still, and that was why the boy wasn't walking away either. 

"Um.." Dan said, not knowing what to do.

He looked back at his feet, and wished he could sink into the ground, disappear into the pavement like a piece of rubbish, and noticed the boy hadn't picked up his book yet. He bend over, picked it up and read the title in the process. 'LGBT History'. 

"Here," he said, handing it to the boy, "Are you interested in this?" He didn't really quite know why he asked. Maybe because he was doing something similar for his essay, and maybe because he wanted to talk to the boy, but we'd never know. The boy took the book out of his hands, and held it like a teddy-bear; protecting it with his arms crossed.

"Yeah, I- I am, I guess." the boy stuttered back. 

"Cool! I'm doing an essay on a gay president, so I'm kind of doing the same subject!" Dan exclaimed, way too excited all of a sudden. It seemed like a burst of confidence had just hit him, and he was terribly unhappy with that - the boy probably thought he was some lonely weirdo that tried to make friends at the library, having small talk about LGBT history like he knew what he was talking about.

"Oh! Fun." the boy said again, and Dan felt he didn't want to continue the conversation with him, but he didn't listen to his mind.

"What's your name?" 

"Mine? It's Phil."


	2. Chapter 2

_Phil Lester_, 

looked at the curly brown haired boy as he walked back to his little space in the foreign non-fiction corner. He knew that corner all too well, and on busy days, regularly had to check if the couple sitting there wasn't hooking up or something - the cameras couldn't look over those impenetrable cookbook-filled walls. It was nice of him to ask him for his name, but odd of him to just walk away right after he said his back.

'_Dan_'. It was a nice name. It suited him. 

Phil wondered if Dan was gay. He had been wondering that, constantly, every single second of every single day, about every boy he met. Since he came to terms with his sexuality, it was almost all he could think about. But even if he was - which would be fortunate because he was kind of _cute_, in a way - nobody would fall in love in a public library.

And so he walked back to his service desk, sitting back down on his little stool, decorated with magenta-colored fake leather, and opened the book. He lied to himself that he was reading, but in reality his eyes were barely scanning the pages and he was just flipping a page every once in a while. He couldn't focus on anything and his mind drifted. He thought of the boy again. Maybe Dan had a girl there; a sickeningly infatuated girl, wearing his letterman jacket, rosè-colored lipstick on his cheek, no efforts to hide it.

He hoped he didn't.

Phil ruffled through his hair and looked at the main hall of the library. It was speckled with desks, but all of them were empty, and so was the rest of the library. Dan seemed to be the only person who went to the library around dinnertime on a Saturday, but he honestly didn't blame them - everybody had better things to do on a Saturday evening. He took out his phone, and googled 'gay president' - just for the fun of it, and read through the results. Actually quite interesting, far more than what he'd been reading just then. He scrolled mindlessly through the Wikipedia page, and doodled a flower on the pile of memos next to the telephone that never rang.

He listened to the church down to the street ring its bells. It was five o'clock, entering dinnertime territory - time for a glass of red wine. Phil decided to return the newly returned books to their shelves, and picked up a pile of books, walking into the big hall. 

First up, a lovely book about birdwatching. Too boring for his taste, but interesting nonetheless.. Non-fiction, English, next to a book about trains. Then a book about the countryside of Italy - quite beautiful, he'd been there on a school trip once - and then another. This job was terribly repetitive but you learned a lot more than you would stocking cereal at Tesco's. 

Phil worked his way through the stack of books he was holding, and then lazily walked back to the reception to pick up another. He mindlessly walked through the library, plucking misplaced books from their shelves and putting the ones he was holding back. He didn't think about the curly haired boy at all, in his little foreign non-fiction corner, typing furiously on a small, expensive laptop, the desk filled with opened books about James Buchanan. 

_Fuck_. Maybe he did.

I mean, who could blame him? Effortlessly charming, perfectly filling out the letterman jacket he had been wearing, a loose smile on his face that melted your insides. Too nice to be forgotten so quickly, making small talk that made Phil feel like they'd been friends since birth. Dan seemed genuinely interested in Phil, even though they only conversed for a small half-a-minute, he _asked _him stuff. 

The bar was so low for gays that even just talking to him for a minute or so made his heart flutter. Phil tried to get Dan out of his head, and worked his way through the stack of books he was still holding. And then he came to the last book. 

'_Berliner Kindheit um 1900_', written by Walter Benjamin. Undoubtedly a foreign non-fiction book; German probably, and there was a space between actual Italian cookbooks and French travel books in the foreign non-fiction for this book - where someone he really didn't want to visit was situated. But he also knew that if he didn't put away this book right now, it would be later in the evening, with an even droopier, more tired Dan, and that would probably be even worse. Maybe Dan would think he was purposefully putting that book away right then, just to pay a visit to him. 

Who cared? He probably wasn't gay anyway. 

Phil began his little journey through the maze of non-fiction shelves. He could see Dan's bright red sleeves through the shelves already. He looked lost in his thoughts, enthusiastically typing on his laptop. He even had a little notebook open. 

Phil walked into the small open space that that desk had created, and tried to pay no notice to Dan, walking straight to the shelf where he knew this book belonged. He didn't even look at the boy, and was quite certain he wouldn't notice him too - he probably had earbuds in.

"Oh! Hey Phil!" he heard, and bit his lip, turning around balancing on his heels. 

"What are you doing here?" Dan asked him, and tilted his head, probably unconsciously, but it was darned cute.

"Oh.. I- Well, I work here, you see," Phil began, stuttering through the sentence like a shy schoolgirl would. You were twenty-two, Phil, English linguistics major, goddammit, you know how to pronounce every word in the English language, even if nobody has ever used it - and here you are, stuttering in front of just a cute boy, who probably wasn't even gay and your age. 

"You work here? Really? Well, can you help me with something then?" Dan asked, and refocused on his computer screen. 

Phil's heart nearly beat out of his chest, and he shrugged and thought about the worst that could happen, and then the best...

Dan pulled out a chair, and Phil took it, smiling at him, his insides turning around like a washing machine on spin cycle. He sat down, on these plastic, endlessly less comfortable chairs, and looked at what Dan had written so far. It wasn't really good. 

"Do you know how to source something in MLA format?" Dan asked him, and giggled.

He had such a cute giggle! Phil wanted to put his head in his hands and dream away with the sound of Dan's little giggle echoing in his mind, infectiously happy as it sounded. 

"Why don't you google that?" he asked in response.

"Well, to be honest," Dan began, fidgeting with the zipper of his jacket, "You seem so smart, I'd think you were smarter than Google."

Phil wanted to scream right then and there. Dan thought he seemed smart! _So_ smart even! He didn't know how fast time was moving, but it should've moved slower. He wanted to live in the feeling Dan's little compliment gave him and stop time, Dan's brown eyes sparkling in the subpar lighting of the yellow library lights, his mouth lifted on only one side, and his head tilted slightly. If he could and it would not be considered harassment, Phil would take a picture. 

"Oh! Thank you, Dan," Phil managed to produce, and he looked at his hands. _Don't blush_, _don't blush_, _don't blush_... And he was blushing.


End file.
